Mothlight

{{Infobox film

| name = Mothlight

| image = Mothlight.png

| caption = A still from Mothlight, showing the wing of an insect

| director = Stan Brakhage

| producer =

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| narrator =

| starring =

| music =

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| released = {{film date|1963}}

| runtime = 4 minutes

| country = United States

| language = Silent

| budget =

}}

Mothlight is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1963.[https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5752/releases/MOMA_1979_0052_43.pdf THIRTY YEARS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA ON EXHIBITION (1979) on MoMA.org] The film was created without the use of a camera.

Description

Mothlight is a silent "collage film" that incorporates "real world elements."Elder, R. Bruce (1998) The films of Stan Brakhage in the American tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson, Wilfrid Laurier, Univ. Press, p389 Brakhage produced the film without the use of a camera,James, David E. (2002) Imagine nation: the American counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, Routledge, p285 using what he then described as "a whole new film technique."MacDonald, Scott (2001) The garden in the machine: a field guide to independent films about place, University of California Press, p69 Brakhage collected moth wings, flower petals, and blades of grass, and pressed them between two strips of 16mm splicing tape.[http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=410:mothlight-and-beyond&catid=59:la-furia-umana-nd-10-autumn-2011&Itemid=61 "Mothlight" and Beyond, (2011) by Fred Camper] La Furia Umana, September 30, 2011 - Accessed June 3, 2013 The resulting assemblage was then contact-printed at a lab to allow projection in a cinema. The objects chosen were required to be thin and translucent, to permit the passage of light. Brakhage reused the technique to produce his later film, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981). Mothlight has been described as boasting a "three-part musical structure."

Production

Brakhage was initially drawn to the idea of using moths in a film when he noticed many of them burning to death in a candle:

Here is a film that I made out of a deep grief. The grief is my business in a way, but the grief was helpful in squeezing the little film out of me, that I said "these crazy moths are flying into the candlelight, and burning themselves to death, and that's what's happening to me. I don't have enough money to make these films, and ... I'm not feeding my children properly, because of these damn films, you know. And I'm burning up here ... What can I do?" I'm feeling the full horror of some kind of immolation, in a way."Commentary by Stan Brakhage on By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 1, taken from 2002 interview with Bruce Kawin

After spending some time following live moths with a camera, an exercise that proved fruitless, Brakhage instead turned his attention towards using dead moths:

"Over the lightbulbs there's all these dead moth wings, and I ... hate that. Such a sadness; there must surely be something to do with that. I tenderly picked them out and start pasting them onto a strip of film, to try to ... give them life again, to animate them again, to try to put them into some sort of life through the motion picture machine."

Reception

Mothlight won awards at the 1964 Brussels International Film Festival, and the 1966 Spoleto Film Festival.Liz Faber, Helen Walters (2004) Animation unlimited: innovative short films since 1940, Laurence King Publishing James Peterson describes Mothlight as belonging "to a new class of films, those that direct attention away from the screen and to the physical object in the projector."Peterson, James (1994) Dreams of chaos, visions of order: understanding the American avante-garde cinema, Wayne State University Press, p81 Darragh O'Donoghue, writing for Senses of Cinema, praised the way Brakhage "evokes the moth not through cartoon mimicry, but by the fragile sensation of its movement, batting against the screen, hurtling in descent."[http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/04/32/mothlight.html Mothlight (2004) by Darragh O'Donoghue] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091003215639/http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/04/32/mothlight.html |date=2009-10-03 }} Senses of Cinema, CTEQ Annotations, June 2004 - accessed November 17, 2010

Along with Window Water Baby Moving (1959), Mothlight remains one of Brakhage's best-known works,Maureen Furniss (2007) Art in motion: animation aesthetics, p44 and his most rented.MacDonald, Scott (2005) A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers, p62 It was released on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection's By Brakhage: An Anthology.{{cite web |url=https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/by-brakhage-an-anthology/ |title=Blu-ray Review: By Brakhage: An Anthology on the Criterion Collection |last=Lanthier |first=Joseph Jon |date=May 24, 2010 |website=Slant Magazine |access-date=April 13, 2024}}